Ascension of the last Celestial

Ever since he left the large cave, there hadn’t been another attack on Valerian. It was like all the squads were called back, completely abandoning their posts to let him walk through without any resistance.

This led to a crushing boredom to settle in. The constant, mind-numbing walking in the pitch-black tunnels with absolutely nothing interesting happening felt like actual torture for Valerian. He was a combat enthusiast, someone who needed the adrenaline of a fight, and this empty silence was driving him crazy. Every corner he turned looked exactly like the last one—just jagged stone, wet dirt, and the occasional glowing moss.

’Just where the hell are they! It has been over an hour and I have seen not a single goblin!’

He even considered intentionally releasing a massive pulse of mana to bait them out, but he knew it would probably just cause the weaker ones to die from pressure or run away even faster. He wanted a fight, not another boring chase.

Left with nothing to do beside walking in the endless dark corridor, Valerian turned his focus to the most mysterious thing he possessed: his unique skill, [Law Breaker].

He had owned this skill now for ten years, ever since he could remember, yet he still hadn’t found a single hard limit to what it could actually do. In the beginning, when he was just a kid exploring his powers, he used it for simple, almost stupid things. He remembered messing with the physics of his environment—turning a cup of water into solid ice without changing its temperature, or making a heavy rock as light as a feather just to throw it farther. It had been like a cheat code for daily life.

But as he grew stronger, the skill evolved with him. It moved away from simple physical pranks to the absolute rule-defying act of stealing another being’s affinity, like he had done with Captain Ford’s lightning and now this goblin’s darkness.

Valerian narrowed his eyes as he stared into the dark. He could feel it deep inside his soul—he had only scratched the surface of what was truly possible with this unique skill. If it could break the law of affinities, what else could it do? While it wasn’t impossible to gain a new affinity, it sure as hell wasn’t as simple as just stealing one. So if it could break the law surrounding affinities, could it also break the concept of distance, allowing him to cross worlds? Could it break the concept of durability, making his body completely immortal? Or better, could it break the law of death itself?

The thought sent a small shiver of excitement down his spine. The sheer potential of the skill was terrifying, even to him.

’I have to do way more testing in the future. Once I’m out of these woods, I need to push this skill to its absolute limits and see what happens when I try to break something truly fundamental.’

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted when his spatial perception lost the ceiling again.

’Another large cave?’

Like before, he sent out a flash of his spatial perception to map out the cave, and to his surprise, the cavern was far larger than the one he had found before.

’Could this be the center of their colony?’

Together with his spatial perception, he also sent out his mana to not only sense the surroundings for physical things but also see the strength of the inhabitants.

And what he felt made his relaxed posture and attitude change into a hyper-alert state, because at the end of the cave, he could feel him. The chief—a SS- rank being.

The chief noticed him the second he stepped into the cave and also sent out his mana to feel the strength of Valerian. So, when he felt that he was only at the S- rank, he was mildly surprised, but that didn’t mean that he would underestimate him; he was, after all, the one that took out the patrol squads and the settlement near the entrance.

The darkness beneath the chief began to move and swallowed him whole. In less than a second, he crossed the 3 km long cave and emerged out of the darkness right in front of Valerian.

As Valerian felt the chief emerge right in front of him and realized his strength, he didn’t retract his spatial perception; he kept it active, mapping out the entire cave at all times.

The chief wasn’t much of a talker, and he sure as hell didn’t feel like wasting words on the person intruding on his territory.

As his body dashed forward, the ground beneath him cracked open by the sheer force of his advance, and a loud boom was heard inside the cave. He cocked his greatsword back, and darkness crawled up his massive body, covering him fully in a kind of armor. Even the sword turned into a pitch-black mass of darkness, with smoke and black mist oozing off it.

Valerian felt the moment the chief began to move that the monster was stronger physically than him. Maybe if he turned into a dragon he could match him, but even then, he wasn’t confident. But if there was one thing that he was better at than the chief, then it was magic.

Letting his mana flow through his affinity, he created a similar armor made from pure darkness, but Valerian’s was deeper and distorted the air around him. His katana was covered by the darkness and the same mist. He dashed towards the chief to match the clash.

It looked like two entities made from pure darkness were dashing towards each other, ready to obliterate the other.

As they got closer, neither backed down or changed their attack; both just went for a contest of strength by clashing their differently sized swords.

When the blades finally met, the sheer shockwave sent out a wave of heavy mana, destroying everything around them. The ground, the nearby houses—nothing in a 50-meter radius remained.

Valerian’s katana seemed small in comparison to the over two meters long sword, but no matter how much force the chief put into the clash, he couldn’t overpower him.

But the clash didn’t stop there. Without wasting a second, they both attacked again. This time, the chief used more of his darkness magic, and on top of the already existing buff he had created, he put a ginormous amount of mana into the slash, ready to destroy his opponent with one strike.

As the attack was about to connect with Twilight, the darkness oozing off the edge in thick waves turned calm, becoming more of a coating than a mist. When the two swords met, all the darkness the chief had put into the strike simply disappeared, swallowed into the crushing singularity hiding in the dark of the sword.

The chief was surprised for a moment that all his darkness mana just ceased to exist, and Valerian made use of that opportunity—this time not retreating, but closing in.

Moving Twilight with lightning speed, he slipped beneath the greatsword and delivered a cut into the left side of the chief. While the chief had his darkness armor protecting him, that darkness also disappeared as it made contact with the sword, though not without slowing it down just enough for him to move to the side and avoid a deeper cut.

The goblin chief had fought since he was born; he was a natural-born predator, destined to be the strongest of his people. Through his long life, he had survived countless life-and-death battles, so a simple cut like that didn’t even make him flinch. He simply willed the darkness armor to mend the wound.

Sensing that the wound he had just inflicted got healed so rapidly, Valerian became curious. He summoned a small ball of light mana and, for the first time, saw the chief in all his glory.

As his spatial perception had mapped out before, the chief’s stature didn’t surprise him much, but it was the color of his skin that made him realize just what kind of beast he was fighting.

Instead of the normal black color of cave goblins, the chief’s body color looked like it was made from the pure darkness element itself.

’So that’s how he regenerates!’

Instead of a normal body made from flesh, the chief, over years of fighting to the death, had slowly replaced his body parts with pure darkness mana, giving him the ability to heal any wound and reform it with darkness mana.

’Marvelous. Can I maybe do the same? But what affinity should I use?’

A flash of clarity went through his mind, like he had finally solved a formula he had been thinking about for ages, and a plan formed in his head.

Not wanting to waste more time, he dashed forward to meet the now fully healed chief head-on. In the span of seconds, they exchanged dozens of strikes, each strong enough to make the massive cave tremble and cause debris and rocks to fall to the ground.

When they finally separated after an especially strong attack by the chief and the dust began to settle, Valerian’s form was revealed, and it was a far cry from the powerful genius look he usually had.

There were cuts all over his body, some shallow, some deep, and his left arm was hanging on by just a thread of muscle. The chief looked at him with hard eyes, not showing one bit of sympathy for the intruder, even if he looked like a kid.

Even though his body was injured and barely standing, there was not one bit of fear or panic in his eyes. The only thing reflecting into the world through his cosmic eyes was pure ecstasy.

And in front of the chief’s eyes, the wounds marking Valerian’s body began to close. No, they didn’t just close—they reformed from a purple energy. Within mere seconds, his pitiful self was restored to its peak, and with a cocky grin, Valerian looked straight into the chief’s eyes.

"Give me your worst."

Like an understanding between warriors, they both disappeared from their spots and reappeared clashing their swords, as the ceiling crashed down.